International Women's Day

It means being able to look at any other person in the world and being able to think: Yes...I would be not be significantly more unhappy if I had been born you. I would not be any more ashamed, I would not be any more afraid, I would not be any more unable to be happy. I might have a different lifestyle, different thoughts, different feelings, maybe even a different set of values than I do now, but I would be no less able to enjoy my life.

It means watching what I say, examining what I think, trying to see inside my head from other peoples point of view. If I were you, would I laugh at that joke? If you were me, would you say it? It means making myself listen to other people, listening for clues as to how they see their world, why they act how they do, making myself imagine thinking like that, acting like that.

It means accepting that just because two views are different, doesn't mean that one of them is 'Right' and the other 'Wrong'. Finding more dimensions to see the world in, more colours to paint thoughts with, more ways of being. Not to laugh when someone does something I find odd, but to watch, to understand, and to accept. To be able to feel differently to you, in the knowledge that neither of us considers our point of view superior, just different.

It means being able to look at You, and seing someone that could be Me.